New James Bond trades womanizing for love

Actors Daniel Craig and Eva Green (L) of the film 'Casino Royale' sit for a portrait in New York, November 6, 2006.

By Mark EganTue Nov 7, 8:12 AM ET

The James Bond played by British actor Daniel Craig doesn't always care if his martini is shaken or stirred and, unlike his womanizing predecessors, this secret agent falls in love and has his heart broken.

"First and foremost this is a Bond movie," Craig told Reuters in an interview about his debut as secret agent 007 in the movie "Casino Royale."

"Every box is ticked, everything is there. We have Aston Martins, we have beautiful girls, we have great locations, we have fantastic action sequences."

But the Liverpool-born actor, best-known for his role in Steven Spielberg's "Munich" and starring in the hip British movie "Layer Cake," says what makes the latest Bond movie different is that it has, "A love story of depth and reality."

"I didn't want to be in a movie where the world needs saving in the first scene and it's saved in the last scene, and all you are doing is filling in the gaps," Craig said. "I don't think it's interesting unless you see character development."

"The real heartbeat of this movie is the love story," said the buff 38-year-old.

Early reviews have been positive ahead of its November 17 release. But fans may barely recognize the character last played by Pierce Brosnan in "Die Another Day" -- the biggest box office hit in the more than four-decade old franchise.

The gadgets beloved by many fans are largely gone, as are the puns and campy jokes. And Bond now plays high-stakes Texas Hold 'em poker, not Baccarat.

Ian Fleming's first novel, 1953's "Casino Royale," was first adapted as a live television play in 1954 with a fast-talking American "Jimmy Bond," and then in 1967 as a spoof Bond movie.

But producer Barbara Broccoli, daughter of the late Bond franchise founder Albert (Cubby) Broccoli, said her company only acquired rights to the book after a messy legal battle.

"It was like the Holy Grail of Bond lore," she said in an interview.

The movie finds Bond starting out as an assassin and coming to terms with killing. But there is no mad villain seeking world domination, instead the bad guy is a financier for terrorists -- a nod to the post-September 11 world.

"This film is more realistic and grittier and very much in keeping with the books, which were much darker," Broccoli said, adding that with the last Bond movie, "We had gone too much in the way of fantasy."

"The world has changed. It has become more serious and the combination of that and getting the rights for the book allowed us to start again," she said, adding that now, "Terrorism is at the forefront of everybody's mind."

Broccoli admits it was an unusual business move to drop Brosnan after his huge success. But she says Craig is "a spectacular Bond" despite initial fan reaction that he was too blond, ugly and insufficiently suave to serve Her Majesty's Secret Service.

"We have taken risks and we have changed. If you don't change you die," she said.

Among those changes, the new Bond is less of a chauvinist.

"Times have changed," Craig said of the sexism of early Bond movies. "If you look at the early 60s, Sean Connery was behaving in a way that isn't acceptable now, and he would be the first to admit that."

But 007's sexism is not completely tamed.

"I still think he is quite sexist and I don't want to lose that," Craig said, even though his love interest Vesper Lynd, played by Eva Green, "is not going to put up with it."

Craig is under contract to make three Bond movies and says, "Unless the box office cuts me off at the knees, I will have another go."

But can a heart-broken Bond ever love again?

"Yes. Without love there is no hope and without hope there is no life," Craig says with a laugh. "Now, I need a drink."